Just to clear the air, 4th edtion has been out for a few years now.

[egomann]

Hackmaster is a blend of the best of 1E & 2E with several key rules thrown in.

Crits & Fumbles. Building Points for Character Creation. Honor (Started in OE, but greatly expanded). Armor & Shield Wear & Tear. A very much improved (Over AD&D) Skill, Talent, and Proficency system. The 20 HP Kicker.

There is a lot of humor elements, but they can mostly be ignored. However some times, especially in modules, the use of Puns goes overboard. Deep Gnomes turned into Smurfs. Gingerbread Men. It is like the freelancers working on the game don't get it.

But it is my preferred system, and I have been playing/running a semi serious game for almost four years. I have hope for it's future, but we will see what happens. Lately there has been a bunch of crap put out for it.

 

[egomann]

Hackmaster character creation... urk. Give me the simplicity of 3e any time!

Cheers!

Well, that may be true to a certain extent, but not totally.

HM character creation is front loaded. 3E character creation is ongoing.

In HM you get Talents at Character creation. In 3E you get Feats as you go up in level.

In HM You get the class(es) you start out with (except Dual Classing). In 3E you can change classes as you go up in level to fit your character concept.

HM has Limits, 3E has Flexibility.

Which one is better is totally a matter of preference. I like Hackmaster because it resembles the game I grew up playing, but I think much improved. 3E Moved away from that model and only superfically resembels earlier editions.

The main difference, IMHO is that in HM the power is in the GM's hands, and in 3E it is in the players hands. Of course the GM is always right, but in HM the rules back him up. In 3E if the GM wants to set limits, he has to set them himself.

 

[romp]

K&C never positioned HM to compete with D&D, even if the license agreement allowed.

I once described HM as 3rd ed. if they had not gone to d20 and feats, etc. Maybe 2.5 is a better descriptor of HM.

HM is not everyone's cup o' tea and all, but it IS a playable system, with some neat ideas although confusing ideas.

 

[Maggan]

Hackmaster is NOT a joke. It is a very well put together game with some parody elements required by the licence.

Doesn't it say in the foreword to the PHB that it's a joke, as well as a game?

Seem to remember something like that, but haven't got the book with me.

/M

 

[MerricB]

K&C never positioned HM to compete with D&D, even if the license agreement allowed.

I once described HM as 3rd ed. if they had not gone to d20 and feats, etc. Maybe 2.5 is a better descriptor of HM.

No. The Player's Option supplements for 2e are generally known as 2.5

HM takes the Player's Option style of character generation (including pseudo-feats, btw), and makes it into a ultra-detailed package.

Where HM goes utterly wrong is with the skill system. Player's Option had got it better, and 3e takes the smooth advancement of PO and creates something that *works*. HM has an ultra-specialised percentile system with uneven advancement...

Where AD&D succeeded was as a simple system. People would throw out the over-complicated initiative and weapons vs. armour systems and concentrate on the basics: the simple race and classes abilities. Hackmaster can have that, but there's more to ignore.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Simple observation, here. Not meant to be taken as hostile.

Lots of people have said "You can play a perfectly serious game of Hackmaster, as long as you ignore the joke elements."

But nobody has yet explained to me why I should have to pay full price for, essentially, half a game. If I'm just going to ignore the parody aspect, why not just play with the many 1E and 2E books I still have on my shelf?

(I actually play a slightly modified form of 3E, and don't see myself going back. The above, though, assumes a hypothetical desire to do so.)

I don't buy the "Well, there's no new material" argument. I, and most gamers I know who might want to play an older edition, have tons of the stuff, more than enough to run campaigns for years. And I'd have to see a lot of solid, factual evidence before I'd believe that Hackmaster has brought more than a tiny number of new gamers into the hobby. If the nostalgia/grognard crowd makes up less than an overwhelming majority of their customer base, I'd be stunned.

 

[MerricB]

Simple observation, here. Not meant to be taken as hostile.

Lots of people have said "You can play a perfectly serious game of Hackmaster, as long as you ignore the joke elements."

But nobody has yet explained to me why I should have to pay full price for, essentially, half a game.

More than full price.

Although Kenzer eventually published a "Field Manual" of monsters (or something like that), the original release of HM was:
* Players Handbook
* Games Masters Guide
* 8 volumes of the Hackopedia of Beasts

The total cost of that was staggering.

The game was aimed very squarely at old AD&D players, who could use their existing Monster Manuals (just adding 20 hp to the monster stats) until they got all the Hackopedia volumes.

I'll point out at this stage that the Hackopedia is alphabetically arranged. It's a lovely joke, but extremely inconvenient to the new purchaser.

I think there's much that's good in Hackmaster. There are some lovely tweaks to the AD&D rules. However, everything feels so clunky and ill-organised.

Cheers!

 

[KenM]

I think there's much that's good in Hackmaster. There are some lovely tweaks to the AD&D rules. However, everything feels so clunky and ill-organised.

Like how Ad+d was?

 

[MerricB]

Like how Ad+d was?

Mostly. I think 2e had things better organised, if simply because there wasn't so much *stuff*. Looking up skills in Hackmaster is an absolute pain - the books are really too thick to be convenient.

I don't enjoy character generation like I should. Partly because of the *intentional* errata, partly because I have to flip through the book so much, and partly because I detest the skill system.

There's so much there which is good...

Cheers!

 

[egomann]

Hackmaster could be better organized, but that can be said of almost any game.

K&C did make some errors, like the 10 volume Hacklopedia. It was fine for me buying them one at a time as they came out monthly, but for a new GM getting into the game it is quite a burden. The field manual was supposed to rectify that, but it only made it worse.

Parody is not 1/2 of the game. It is IMHO less than 5% of the game. I have already explained how it differs from AD&D, so I won't go into that again. What I will say is that most of the changes and additions have been for the better, and I think that makes the game worth playing over 1st & 2nd edition.